


the paragon of animals

by weird_bird (2weird4)



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman and Robin (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Damian Learns to Be a Person, Dick Grayson is Batman, Gen, ORC (Original Rat Character)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-08 15:51:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10390290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2weird4/pseuds/weird_bird
Summary: Damian scurries towards him, weird green in the night vision, gloved hands cupped around something. “Don’t yell!”“Don’t yell?” Dick’s outraged. “I wouldn’t have to yell if you didn’t go running off in the middle of patrol--”Lenses pinching into white fury, Damian holds a finger to his lips. “Shh!”





	

**Author's Note:**

> title from _hamlet_ (yeah).
> 
>  **warnings** : set during morrison's b & r (though inspired by spotty from new 52 b & r), which means bruce is dead. weird hamlet reference?? tw misplaced shakespeare? also this is about a rat so don't read if rats gross you out.
> 
> inspired by lace, because aren't i always.

Dick switches the settings of the cowl lenses, trying to squint through the chilly rain dicing the air. “Robin? Robin!”

Metallic _clang_ of a kicked-over trash-can from the next alley over, and Dick strides in that direction, picking up the stupid bulletproof cape like Cinderella avoiding puddles.

Not that Dick gets paid for this, but he doesn’t get paid _enough._

“What are you doing?” Uncomprehending, Dick surveys the gloom.

Damian scurries towards him, weird green in the night vision, gloved hands cupped around something. “Don’t yell!”

“Don’t yell?” Dick’s outraged. “I wouldn’t have to yell if you didn’t go running off in the middle of patrol--”

Lenses pinching into white fury, Damian holds a finger to his lips. “Shh!”

And Dick shushes, more out of indignation than by force of a ten-year-old’s ire.

Damian’s protectively-closed palms blossom open and reveal the single ugliest rodent Dick’s ever laid eyes on, and he’s seen Superman-splice mice.

“What is _that?”_ Really, he shouldn’t react with so much fervor. He’s sure that’s what Damian wants, that he’s just trying to get a rise out of Dick like always.

Damian’s masked glare intensifies. “She’s hurt.”

With a closer look at the bedraggled, spotted, one-eyed, six-toed thing in Damian’s hands, he does see that the rat sports a jagged red cut on top of everything else. “Did the League give you your shots? Those gloves aren’t gonna feel as thick as they look when she bites you.”

Ignoring him as usual, Damian transfers the rat to one hand and unclasps his cape with the other, swaddling it like a scrawny baby in a huge blanket. Of course, this means that the rain’s dumped right onto his head, black hair plastered to round skull.

Dick allows himself one long, deep sigh. “Let’s just go home.”

Although Damian marches past Dick like he hasn’t heard him at all, Dick does notice that, rat bundled to his chest, he marches in the direction of the Batmobile.

 

Chin on the table, Damian stares down the rat, who’s housed for the moment in a cardboard box filled with shredded newspaper.

Dick adds another line to his report, grateful that he’s gotten several paragraphs in without Damian’s snark. 

“She isn’t shivering,” Damian announces.

When he looks up, Damian stares him down like her physiology is precisely Dick’s fault. “Maybe she’s already warm,” Dick suggests.

 _Outlandish,_ Damian’s face seems to say without his mouth moving. Impressive like Bruce that way. “It is cold in the Cave.” Plain and slow to accommodate for just how dumb he thinks Dick is.

“Speaking of the Cave...aren’t there enough rodents here?” 

“Speaking to a man dressed in a bat costume rather than a rat costume--no matter how mousy Drake can get, she is the only rodent here.”

Dick pauses. “Right. Chiroptera.”

Damian snorts.

“The point still stands.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

Dick has to recover somehow. “The _point_ is, shivering isn’t the only way for her to warm herself up.” Dick peers into the box. She’s been bandaged and toweled down, looking better than before, still not _good._ “Mammals have brown fat tissue they burn to get warm.”

He stares at Dick, then the rat. “Do humans have brown fat tissue?”

“Recent research says that actually, we do.” Dick pokes one of Damian’s amazingly round cheeks. Amazing, that is, because of how much of the softness of a child there still is to this prickly boy. Sometimes he forgets. “Especially babies.”

When Damian scowls, it’s distractedly. He’s too busy going nose-to-nose with the rat like his eyes could CT scan her for evidence of adipose tissue.

Dick just counts himself lucky that he gets to keep his poking finger.

 

“Ow--what the--” It’s not often that Dick stubs his toe, but the accidental kick at the chunk of wood sends a shock-wave through his leg that makes him hop back and forth in pain.

“Don’t destroy it!” Damian flings his arms out and bends forward protectively over what Dick thought was just an enormous mess on the floor.

Upon closer inspection, it is indeed a jumble of wooden blocks and cardboard boxes, but he sees that it’s actually a makeshift maze.

The rat ambles down a corridor, stopping to nibble one of the seeds Damian’s scattered over the floor.

“What’s all this?” Dick asks, bewildered. 

Damian holds up a hand for silence, leaning in with intensely. The rat pauses, nose and whiskers twitching, and takes a left. Face solemnly scrunched, he sinks back down and nods to himself. “Training.”

“Training,” he repeats. “For what?”

Giving him a dark look, Damian simply says, “You never know.” He reaches into the maze and extracts the rat, cradling her increasingly-sleek body in his lap. She may be getting a bit more shapely, but she’s still not a looker, Dick maintains. Damian, however, grows more enamored day by day.

“Well, they’re supposed to be pretty smart.” Dick reaches out, and Damian actually moves his hand so that Dick can stroke her back, feeling frail under his fingers. 

“I’m not training her too much,” Damian reassures him, though it’s not an accusation Dick made. “Sometimes we--play. And I give her treats.”

Dick scritches her under her little rat chin. “Yeah. I can tell,” he teases. 

“I didn’t know how to be good to her.” Damian takes her from Dick and places her on his shoulder. “I could have hurt her.”

Watching as she trundles over his nape, tail sweeping around his throat, Dick points out, “You didn’t.” She’s snuggling into his fleece-lined hoodie now. “You’re taking good care of her.”

He thinks Damian’s pause means he’s figuring out whether to believe Dick. At last, Damian looks up at him from under grave dark brows. “I’m learning.”

Dick smiles a little. “So what did you name her?” Damian’s beginning to take apart the maze, though he tries not to move too much and jostle the now-slumbering rat.

Damian looks up and says without blinking, “Ophelia.”

He stares at the rat. “Because she almost drowned? That’s kinda morbid, don’t you think?”

Corner of his mouth pointing into a smirk, Damian doesn’t respond, just checked his watch. “Pennyworth asked me to help him in the garden. Hold her.”

Dick’s not surprised that he asked, but he’s surprised Damian agreed. He’s so surprised that he actually does go ahead and hold the rat as he follows him out to the garden.

Watching Damian dig in the loam to plant bulbs, he recalls fondly doing the same every spring under Alfred’s careful watch, Bruce lurking in the doorway. 

And Bruce is gone, but the daffodils will still greet his birthday, and sometimes all someone small needs is a warm hand, and Robin still has plenty to teach Batman.

Rolling up his sleeves, he gentles Ophelia down into the flowerbed, where she curls up in petals of scarlet and violet, her ears almost looking like little blossoms themselves.

Damian points his trowel at him accusingly, eyes nothing like Bruce’s but the laughter in them half of what Dick knows of love. “Who’s morbid now, Grayson?”

Everything comes around. Some circles are just smaller than others.

**Author's Note:**

> flower themes again..someone stop me.
> 
> come say hi on [my tumblr!](http://2-weird-4.tumblr.com/)


End file.
